Inverse Live Coding: A practice for learning web development

In this case we can probably assume the author is proficient in several other languages, as well as in pedagogy, so nah.

>Does it bother anyone else that the author was teaching something they weren't proficient in? Is this normal for colleges?

Yes, it concerns me - but it doesn't really surprise me (my own UG CS experiences have really disillusioned me with regard to how much of a priority teaching quality really is, particularly in research-intensive institutions). It doesn't sound like the author had much say in the situation "I also had to teach it", so unsure if the department is the root problem here.

But it's doing a disservice to students - particularly given in the US they'll be paying much, much more than the tuition fees here in the UK (which I think are excessive as it is). It's not good enough. If you're going to offer a class that's more practical, covering real web technologies, do it properly or don't offer it at all. We risk teaching poor practices otherwise and I've seen these lead to real security issues when students enter industry and want to put these skills to use.

I've been involved in coding education for about 7 years and this is the approach I've always taken. It works!

At https://www.missionbit.com/ I taught a web development class for a while and we'd start with a pre-built but very simple web application. It was a "social wall" that displayed a list of messages and had a textbox that let people create new messages.

It used a real database, was ready to deploy on day 0, but did only that one thing (two endpoints, one database table, etc.).

Over the class students would add new features (liking, sorting, user authentication, etc.).

It works well if the project(s) connect!

I'm from a country where it's not too rare to see teachers in their 60s, who pretty much taken deep roots in the university, reading lectures in monotone without ever touching practice on the subject in the ‘real world.’ The lag of universities behind modern technology has become a matter of frustrated laughter here, and a widespread position is that a degree is only for the resume, with you forgetting everything you ‘learned’ on the day you graduate.

And my belief, as far as I gathered from hearsay, was that ‘Western’ approach was different, what with having professors who actually work in the field between lectures. So I was, uh, rather surprised to read this.

The major crisis in university CS Ed is that there are nowhere NEAR enough qualified professors to teach all the subjects. There will not be enough in the next 5 years, assuming there is no radical change in qualification expectations. There are simply not enough PhDs being granted to keep up with the demand of students, and not enough students want to stick around and teach when they could be making tons of money in industry instead.

Universities have a short list of options. Having instructors who are smart and understand the material but may not be masters of it? That's a really good situation to be in, compared to the worst case scenarios. Sure, maybe Mark doesn't feel comfortable live coding in front of a classroom for web dev (a skill, by the way, that changes dramatically every year). But he's someone who cares about teaching, plays around with his teaching strategy, and is smart (I mean, he's freaking Mark Guzdial). With those three facts, his students are in a significantly better situation than the average university class.

I had to teach "Intro to Algorithms" the past two semesters. I got an A in that class when I took it, and I'm able to solve most problems from the textbook. Does that mean I can stand up in front of the class and solve any question from the textbook? Absolutely not. Does that make me less qualified than Skienna or Djikstra? Absolutely. Does that mean I can't teach the class? I don't think it does. I can build and grade assignments, I can lecture in class, I can answer most reasonable questions that students have, and I can build good exams that fairly measure my students' knowledge. I'm sure my students would prefer to have an instructor who can do all of those things and also be able to perfectly answer any possible Algorithms question they may have. But unfortunately, that person doesn't exist at University of Delaware - or if they do, then they're teaching one of the other required courses, and we couldn't spare them to teach Intro to Algorithms. It's just the way things are with hiring. I don't think my students' careers are going to suffer because I can't whip out a proof for the reduceability of Vertex Cover to 3-Sat live in front of them.

Ironically, I would feel extremely confident about live coding for a Web Dev course. Hopefully I get a chance to teach one at some point, because I'm pretty sick of teaching Intro to Algorithms :)